Mobile communication devices, such as cellular phones and personal digital assistants with wireless data communication capabilities, continue to proliferate. Application software from myriad sources allows the usefulness of these devices to be expanded beyond the usefulness represented by the application suite provided with the devices when provided by the manufacturer.
Many of the applications available may be compiled specifically for a particular mobile device platform. The mobile device platform may be defined by operating system and/or processor and may be proprietary. Alternatively, applications may be compiled specifically for a virtual machine. To allow for a wide range of applications to execute on a device having a given platform, manufacturers typically develop a virtual machine for their particular platform. The virtual machine is developed for a predetermined universal language, such as Java™ or one of the variations of Java™.
For security purposes, a user may want to limit the activities an application may perform and, thereby, limit the resources to which the application has access while executed on a mobile device.
In the drawings, like reference numerals denote like elements or features.